


a tide in the affairs of men

by bygoneboy



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Falling In Love, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, M/M, Past Torture, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-18
Updated: 2017-04-18
Packaged: 2018-10-20 14:53:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10664973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bygoneboy/pseuds/bygoneboy
Summary: 5 Times Percival Graves Quoted Classic Literature (And The One Time He Didn’t), for thenightpainter's gravebone twitter exchange.prompt: ‘domestic gravebone, minor angst. any au, something cute, with daily events of the two of them happy. any rating. basically writer’s choice’.





	a tide in the affairs of men

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thenightpainter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thenightpainter/gifts).



> [posted originally on tumblr,](http://bygoneboy.tumblr.com/post/159622983987/a-tide-in-the-affairs-of-men) putting it up here as well. thank you kay for putting this exchange together!! x

i.  
  


The first time Credence sees Mr. Graves again, it’s from the shadows: deep in the night-black back corners of an alleyway, and from within the dark beast he’s made of himself. He sees him come out of a brightly-bannered shop with a thin package under his arm. He sees him pass under the streetlamps, and glance over his shoulder at every other turn. Somewhere in the back of his mind Credence thinks _no,_ thinks _bad,_ thinks _run, run, run._ But it’s the first familiar shape he’s recognized since the subway tunnels, and the thing inside of him is bloodied and bruised. And crawls closer, whimpering, begging to be fed.

Wrapped up in the obscurus everything appears fragmented, and very far away. Shattered glass eyes, smudged at the edges. Graves looks thin, odd. Patchy. Nothing like the smooth, sleek creature Credence had known, but it’s him, Credence thinks— or Credence’s beast thinks, rather, flaring, reaching, he knows it’s him, he would know him anywhere—

Graves turns, abruptly, on his heel: there’s the spin of his coat, blowing out behind him, the tear of the package paper and the clatter of its box on the pavement. Then Graves has a wand clutched in his fist, white-knuckled grip, thrust out at the thin-stretched shadow that’s all Credence has left.

There’s a long moment of silence. Of Graves’ wand-hand trembling, and the vein in his neck pulsing, wild and out-of-rhythm.

“Ah,” he says at last, mildly, if hoarse. “Yes, of course. That’s…right. Just my luck.”

This close to him, Credence feels dazed, and sort of spectral. He can make out more than he could from the alley: the hollow gauntness to his face, the gray shot through his hair. He watches as Graves bends down to gather up the box and wrapping. He watches as Graves pockets his new wand.

“Credence,” says Graves, looking at him, through him. “You’re Credence? Can you understand me?”

 _Yes,_ Credence thinks, distantly, but doesn’t say. Doesn’t speak. He’s rather forgotten how to.

“Are you going to kill me?”

 _I want to,_ Credence thinks, but doesn’t say, and wouldn’t say, even if he could. He doesn’t know how true it is. He doesn’t know if it would help. He’s very tired. And Graves is pacing, wearing down the pavement under his oxford heels.

“Damn it,” he’s muttering, “damn it all. What’s Sera’s policy for— to _hell_ with policy, Christ. Credence,” and he’s looking up at him again, “just…”

He reaches toward his own throat, and undoes his tie. He pushes back his collar. There’s a thick-banded red scar circling his neck.

It looks, Credence thinks, a little like a chain.

 _“'Brutus was Caesar’s angel,'”_ says Graves, like Credence is supposed to understand. “That's—” Graves clears his throat, glass scraped over rock. “Sorry. It’s from a play, never…nevermind.”

He paces a few more feet, something slightly frantic to the uneven stagger of his steps. Then he slows, and turns, and looks back.

“You could come with me,” Graves says. “You could trust me, Credence. I wouldn’t hurt you.”

He would be a fool, to fall for it twice.

But what else can he do, apart from this, the only thing he’s ever understood?

So he follows.

  
ii.  
  


He doesn’t remember falling asleep. When he wakes, it’s to the foreign feeling of soft, heavy quilts, and a sweet, earthy smell, and the sound of half-muffled voices in another room. He flexes his fingers, wiggles his toes. They’re solid: flesh, blood, and bone. The beast is quiet, still fast asleep; he closes his eyes to find it, and falls back into blurry dreams.

When he comes to again, Tina Goldstein is slumped on a stool at his bedside, with her face in her hands.

Graves is in the doorway.

His tie is loose around his neck, and his sleeves have been rolled to his elbows. With the strange scar caught around his throat he looks like a ghost— or a daydream, Credence thinks, sleep-addled, or a strange collision of something all mixed up, in-between.

“Credence,” Graves says, softly, when their eyes meet, then, louder, “Tina.”

Tina startles, her head snapping up. Credence blinks slowly at her as she stares at him, her hands curling into fists at her knees. “Credence,” she says. There’s pity in the shape of his name, and guilt. “Do you remember me?”

He tests his voice. It comes out thin, and whispering, “Yes.”

She looks relieved. Graves looks sort of stricken. “How are you feeling?”

“Tired.”

“Of course— I’d imagine—”

Tina’s fingers curl and fidget in her lap, one knee bouncing. Her mouth twists, as if weighing something in her mind; then she seems to toss worry to the wind, moving to sit on the edge of the bed, pressing one hand to his own. “Graves,” she says, pointedly, over her shoulder.

“Right,” says Graves, taking a hesitant step toward them; Credence curls into Tina, and he stops. “I’ll…maybe you should explain. Better, if he hears it from you.”

“He has a scar,” Credence whispers to Tina. He can feel his heartbeat against his ribs, frightened and unsure.

Tina’s hand tightens over his. “Yes,” she says, “he does.”

“I don’t remember…” He stares up at the ceiling. Had he ever seen it, before? It seems like a strange thing to forget. “He hurt me,” he says. That, he’s sure of.

“Credence,” Tina says, gently. “I know this is going to sound crazy. But the man you knew—”

It takes a long time for her to explain.

It takes longer for Credence to understand.

By the time she’s finished, he’s half-shadow, and half-asleep.

“I don’t know how he did it,” murmurs Tina, as he drifts off again. “I don’t know how— he’s still whole.”

Graves hums. “The minute I saw him, I thought it was over. But all he did was stand there. White eyes. Just like the report.”

“If I’d been through everything he has…”

 _“‘We are all created to be miserable,’”_ says Graves, low.

“That’s…not helpful, Graves.”

“That’s Tolstoy, Tina.”

Tina’s laugh, strained but true, is the last thing Credence hears before sleep swallows him whole.

  
iii.  
  


Living with the Goldsteins proves easier than Credence had expected: the rhythm of time goes on, whatever beat it’s been given. The fireplace sends Tina to work early at the Woolworth building, and most nights she stays there late, far into the evening. On the weekends she hauls home thick-papered case files and dumps them on the floor, scratching through them with a fountain pen and remembering to munch occasionally on whatever her sister has fixed her to eat.

Promotions, says Queenie, shaking her head, sometimes just mean twice the work, without double the pay. She had used to work there, too, but never doing any of the kind of things Tina does. And in any case, she’d quit to work at a bakery— which is supposed to be a secret, for reasons Queenie hasn’t explained, although it seems inexplicably tied to the way that she looks at the bakery’s owner, and the way that he looks at her.

Credence spends most of his time there with the two of them, keeping quiet and out of the way and as human as he can manage. Sometimes Jacob asks him to bring up something from storage; often Queenie sends him on delivery runs, but he doesn’t mind. It’s a little like being handed the keys to the city, allowed out without the constant threat of a belt-buckle hanging overhead. It’s certainly a different world, one he’d only ever dreamed of, glimpsed briefly.

They’ve discovered that his magic is either wandless, or destructive: Tina accepts this after he sets the living room on fire. They’ve talked about hiring a private tutor, but money is stretched thin between the three of them and the brownstone’s rent. And so instead Credence sets out to learn on his own: picking up whatever he can from Queenie’s old schoolbooks, and Tina’s spare minutes between work and sleep.

“Maybe Mr. Graves…?” Queenie had said, once, innocently enough, but the look Tina had given her would have sent Credence’s beast quailing with its tail between its legs.

Admittedly, when it comes to Graves, Credence feels slightly cast aside.

He suspects that Queenie knows how it’s nagged at him, and perhaps that’s the reason she’d brought it up in the first place. Queenie knows most things, knows most everything. It seems annoying at the very least, overwhelming, at most; he isn’t sure he would want to hear even the things that sometimes pop into his head, from anyone else. Things about Mary Lou, the other Graves. The real one.

Credence hasn’t seen him since the night he had been led to Tina’s doorstep. It isn’t that Graves owes him— if anything, he owes Graves. For his life, maybe. For everything he has now, undoubtedly.

But he wouldn’t know where to find him even if he wanted to.

“Hey, honey,” says Queenie, flour on her hands and in her hair, jolting him from his thoughts as she bumps him with her hip. “Be a doll and deliver these for me?”

…

Honestly—

He supposes he should have seen this coming, from a mind-reader.

“Credence,” says Graves from behind the open door, looking about as startled as Credence feels. “What— what are you doing here?”

Credence holds out the parcel. Then holds up the address, Queenie’s scrawl on a small slip of paper.

“Kowalski’s?” says Graves. “I didn’t put in for a delivery.”

“Oh,” says Credence, feeling his face go hot. “Uh, sorry. I’m sorry. Do you just— maybe, want to take them, anyway?”

Graves chews on his lower lip for a moment. He looks from the parcel to the address to Credence, back to the address again.

“They’re Erumpent muffins,” says Credence, weakly, and sees Graves smile, close-lipped, crooked.

“All right,” he says, at last, and opens the door wider. “Come on in.”

…

There’s an uncanny amount of books littering the small entryway, and the cascade continues as Graves leads him through the parlor— more books than Credence has ever seen in one place, or at all. They seem to have been tossed haphazardly around the place, taking up cushions and tabletops alike, along with a generous pile of food-crusted dishes. “My apologies for the mess,” Graves says, rubbing at the back of his neck. “I’m taking some time off from…everything. Which includes housekeeping, apparently. I suppose I could hire someone to take care of it for me, but, well.” He looks over at Credence and smiles, half-sardonic. “I’ve had some difficulty managing the idea of letting a perfect stranger into my home. ' _Safety from being understood,'_  if you catch my meaning. Not that you’re a stranger, I didn’t mean to imply, I meant— well. You know who I meant.”

There are books in the kitchen, too. Graves pats his pockets for his wand, which he doesn’t find, then curses under his breath, finally sweeping the books off of the counter without it and cradling them against his chest. “There. You can set them there, thank you.”

Credence does. But then, of course— without the parcel in his hands, he isn’t sure where to put them. In his pockets? And how does he normally stand? He thinks of leaning against the counter, and then feels rather stupid. “You have a lot of books,” he says at last, his voice coming out higher than he’d have liked.

“True,” says Graves, amused, glancing down at the pile in his arms. “I was…something of an avid reader, before MACUSA. And now that I have so much time to myself—” He swallows, throat working around words he doesn’t say, and Credence remembers the scarred ring around his neck. “There are some things I’d rather not be thinking about,” Graves says. “I figure it’s either a hobby, or drinking myself into a stupor to sleep, and— I’d prefer to bet on the hobby.”

He sounds bitter. And sad, but just a little.

“Anyway— I’m going through my old collections—”

“I could help,” Credence says. Unthinking, letting the words leave his mouth before he really understands them, “I could help you. With the mess. And the books.”

“Would you?” asks Graves, something hopeful lighting behind his eyes. “Although— I wouldn’t want to subject you to this, the work would bore you, no doubt.”

“No, I’d love—” He stumbles over his own tongue. Too willing, over-eagerness spilling out even as he tries to hold it to his chest. “I’d like to. Very much.”

He’s an hour later than he’s ever been, by the time he heads back to the bakery.

But he has a feeling Queenie isn’t going to mind.

  
iv.  
  


“Do you read much, Credence?”

They’ve started in the parlor, where there are mostly scattered historical fictions, and a few volumes of fantasy. Credence looks up from potion-stained pages of _E. Nesbit’s Fairy Tales_ that’s begun to fall out of its binding. “A little,” he says, meaning hymns and prayers, a chapter of introductory spells and nothing else.

“Tell me,” says Graves, “what sorts do you prefer? Adventure, drama? Romance?”

Credence flushes, thinking about the dime-novels he’s seen on cart-corners and in general stores. The printed pictures on the covers had always fascinated him: bright colors, grand scenes. Canyons and caves and ship battles at sea, men with dark eyes and strong arms— Mary Lou had always pulled him away. Eventually he had learned to stop looking.

Graves seems to notice his hesitation; he doesn’t press. Instead he chooses a book from the stack himself: thin, yellow-paged. “Here,” he says, offering it. “Maybe this?”

Credence smooths the tips of his fingers down the spine; the cover is velvet to the touch. He opens it to the very first page—

And very nearly drops it when the author’s bearded ink-portrait-likeness smiles up at him, and winks.

“Oh, don’t mind Whitman,” says Graves, waving a hand and turning back to the make-shift library he’s made of his home. “He’s a horrible flirt, especially in that edition _—_ ah, and here’s _Fountain of Fair Fortune,_ and _Enchanted Encounters,_ of course, you’ll like those…”

“Do all of the pictures move?” asks Credence, cheeks heating as he watches the poet wiggle suggestive eyebrows within the confines of his little frame.

Graves makes a non-committal sound, browsing through more titles. “Not all of them. Some of these are printed non-magically— although even no-maj copies do sometimes pick up magical traits, if they’ve been sitting around particularly potent reads.”

Credence turns to the second page. There are inked flowers scrawled along the top, encircling each poem; when he touches them with a fingertip, they shed petals, drifting down and gathering at the bottom of the page. Silent. Snow-like.

 _“Life is infinitely stranger,”_ says Graves, watching him, _“than anything which the mind of man could invent.”_

“That’s lovely,” says Credence, hushed.

“That’s Conan Doyle,” says Graves. “Don’t worry, I’ll get you there.”

  
v.

  
Credence comes back the next day, and the day after that. And slowly the rooms of Graves’ apartment begin to take shape and form: the fireplace is revealed, behind a teetering pile of biographies; after clearing the kitchen of the plays, Credence finds the empty bakery box. The only leftovers are muffin crumbs, and a candied Erumpent eye.

And then, two weeks into the project, Credence lets himself into Graves’ apartment, and finds the parlor empty.

He isn’t in the kitchen, either, and his bedroom is empty and still— at last he finds the bathroom door shut, steam creeping through the slot underneath.

He’ll let him know he’s here, he thinks. 

He raises his hand to knock.

The door opens, and his closed knuckles land on Graves’ bare chest.

“Oh,” says Graves, surprised, and naked.

“Sorry,” blurts Credence, flushing up to his ears. He turns away, squeezing his eyes shut on instinct, opening them a moment later when he stumbles straight into one of the knee-high stacks of novella. “Sorry, sorry—”

The bathroom door shuts behind him. He can feel his heartbeat in his head, low in his belly, pounding incessantly; he curls his toes in his shoes and grits his teeth, afraid that he’ll start to disappear. Afraid that when Graves comes back out he’ll be nothing but smoke and ash and shadow.

The door opens again.

“Credence,” says Graves.

“Sorry—”

“It’s all right, you’re all right.”

Credence turns around. Graves has pulled on a pair of trousers; his chest is still bare, hair still dripping.

The scar around his neck is scarlet.

And Credence, feeling either idiotic or very brave, asks: “How did it happen?”

Graves’ hand flies to his throat. He barks out a laugh, humorless. “I— hah. I made a mistake.”

“What kind?”

“The kind you can’t take back,” says Graves. “He disguised himself. Came to me claiming he was seeking asylum. I believed him, and—” He fingers the scar, thumb rough on the edges. “Woke up in chains.”

“You trusted him.”

 _“‘The man of many devices,’”_ Graves quotes, rueful. “You trusted him, too.”

Credence nods, throat closing around words: remembering the way the wizard had spoken to him, drawn him in. There had been something enchanting there that sickens him, now. He thinks of Graves’ favorite story, the Odyssey and its sirens, singing so sweetly that all the sailors dove themselves drowned.

“I heard he was quite the charmer at the office,” says Graves. “My fault, I’m afraid, I was hardly close with my subordinates. It gave him a beautifully blank slate. No one suspects anything from just a smile.” He draws a hand through his hair, half-dressed and weary and unfairly beautiful. “He made victims of us all, Credence.”

But he’s gone, Credence wants to say. And you’re here. And it isn’t a tragedy, not yet. Maybe not ever— _please,_ Credence thinks, desperately, _please, not ever._

“I don’t feel like doing much work today,” Graves says, filling the space his silence has left. “We’ve made a decent enough dent already, haven’t we— why don’t you stay for dinner?”

  
i.  
  


Credence has never had more than a mass-sip’s mouthful of wine before. And later, that is exactly what he’ll blame it on.

Graves had magicked together the food, the same way Queenie does; even after living in the Goldstein’s brownhouse, Credence had still watched it happen with an embarrassing sort of awe. At the table they sit across from each other, Graves carrying conversation the way he always does, Credence sipping too fast from a wineglass that looks too expensive to touch. Feet bumping into each other, on accident. Credence sipping more wine and feeling them bump— less on accident.

“Did you ever finish that book of poems?” Graves asks, suddenly. “The one you took, with the portrait, the one that startled you.”

Credence blinks, memory coming slow. “Oh, I— I put it back,” he says. “I didn’t borrow it.”

“Hmm,” says Graves. “You should.”

“Borrow it?”

“Take it.”

“For…for me?” Credence asks, feeling warm from his toes to his ears. “I don’t know, it’s yours, I shouldn’t—”

“Credence,” says Graves, looking straight at him, “I’d hate for you to mistake this as a complaint, but I can’t help but notice— you’re here quite often.”

The warmth evaporates.

“You could use an extra hand,” says Credence, very softly.

“If that’s the only reason…” Graves gestures, aimlessly. “It’s a lot of work, for nothing in return.”

“I want to help. I like— helping you.”

It’s half the story. But the full truth is off-the-table, the restricted section: the fact is that it’s Graves he likes, immensely, that it’s Graves who puts Credence at ease in a way he’d never felt with Grindelwald, with anyone. And it’s Graves who’s as lonely as Credence had been, before Queenie and Tina, before he’d learned to translate the humming buzz in his bones as magic, and not just another kind of sin.

“What if,” starts Graves, then stops short. “Hell, Credence. What if I’d just prefer your company— over your help?”

His head feels fuzzy— _wine, he’ll say, later—_ “You don’t…want me to help?”

“I want—” Graves says. “Credence—” he says.

And his chair scrapes back and he’s half-standing, one hand braced on the table, the other holding Credence’s chin between his thumb, and his forefinger. “You’ve made me feel more alive in two weeks than I’ve felt since I saw the sun again. Happy, without reservation. Endlessly, you understand?”

“Oh,” says Credence, very faintly, going dizzy, feeling Graves’ fingers on his jaw, leaning up, leaning in. “What— what is that from, is that from something?”

“No,” Graves says, and smiles until he laughs. “No, Credence, it isn’t.”

Around them there’s a sort of thrill, rippling through the room; Credence feels it break from the frame of his body without warning, sending book pages rifling: his own sort of magic. Wandless. Wordless, beyond language.

When Graves kisses him, it’s magic of another kind.  
  


**BONUS:  
  
**

There’s a parcel on the Goldstein’s kitchen table the next morning, with Credence’s name on the tag.

Inside is a thin, yellow-paged book, a winking, bearded Whitman, and a quote, handwritten:

 _We must have a turn together, I undress, hurry me out of sight of the land,_  
_Cushion me soft, rock me in billowy drowse,_  
_Dash me with amorous wet, I can repay you._

“If Tina asks, I don’t know a thing about it,” whispers Queenie beside him, giggling as he feels his face go hot, and begin to redden. “Whatever are friends for, honey?”

 

**Author's Note:**

> the referenced quotes, in order: 
> 
> i. julius caesar, william shakespeare  
> ii. anna karenina, leo tolstoy  
> iii. the madman, kahlil gibran  
> iv. sherlock holmes: a case of identity, arthur conan doyle  
> v. the odyssey, homer  
> bonus: song of myself, walt whitman


End file.
